Bezen

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Sessions: 259

Audio recordings: 684

Video recordings: 9

Annotations: 110

Images: 74

Last update: 2017-6-18

Bezen, a hitherto completely undescribed Jukunoid language of the Yukuben-Kuteb subgroup, is spoken by approximately 450 individuals (Ethnologue 2009) in the remote village of Bezen (formerly: Kpwep) in the Furu-Awa Subdivision of the North-West Region of Cameroon.

Restricted to intra-ethnic communication in contexts of family and village life, farm work, local council meetings and traditional ceremonies, the Bezen language is exposed to serious endangerment due to ongoing processes of shift towards languages of wider communication such as Jukun and Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) which severely erode its internal register diversity and the L1-competence of speakers of all generations.